


hold your hands up to your chest (and tell me what you find)

by jadeandquartz



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Campaign 05: A Crown of Candy, and somewhat detached/non-human descriptions of them, eldritch fae entities most definitely do not understand humans, from the perspective of said eldritch horror, grammatically incorrect usage of Latin, leading to some opposing priorities, the terror of loving something so much you need to destroy it to keep it safe, to say the least, very eldritch-horror-esque
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25174363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeandquartz/pseuds/jadeandquartz
Summary: The Sugar Plum Fairy does not think she possesses the power to die.But, if she could, she wouldgladlydie from joy.How wonderful it is, to be made of magic. Howwonderfulit is, that it will never go away.***(Or: The Sugar Plum Fairy has lived as long as the world itself. Now, she makes a new one, a place where the Rocks family will never have to suffer again.)
Relationships: Lapin Cadbury & The Sugar Plum Fairy, The Sugar Plum Fairy & The House of Rocks
Comments: 25
Kudos: 57





	hold your hands up to your chest (and tell me what you find)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "The River" by AURORA, a very good and uplifting song that takes on much darker tones when listened to in the context of this fic

In the beginning, the world is perfect. 

The Great Stone Candy Mountains, towering mounds of crystal and cream, stand untouched by wind and rain and snow. Rivers of bubbling cola run through rich beds of earth and marbled veins of stone. The pink and purple grasses of the rolling Candian fields whisper soft secrets that no one else is able to hear. Darkness and grief are nothing more than distant hypotheticals. 

The Sugar Plum Fairy wanders the world, transfixed by the endless summer twilight. 

_Amor aeternus._

All is perfect. 

As she wanders, the years slipping past her like fireflies, the trees of the forests start to rustle with the faint breeze of her passage. Their leaves are heathered lavender, the same shade as her wings. They glow with the faint gold of the Bulb, floating silent and unconcerned in the bright sky above, and she plucks a leaf from a nearby branch, stares at it in awe, tries to understand what causes this strange light to occur. 

_A mystery._

The Sugar Plum Fairy learns, soon, that her claws and teeth and nails are easily sharp enough to rip through a leaf. She plucks more from the trees and lays them out, a velvety lavender carpet across the forest floor. Then, she sets to work disassembling them ceaselessly. She experiments for days that soon turn to years, pokes and prods with curiosity until she finally learns the truth. 

That glow is called _magic_ , she comes to understand. _Magic_ resides in the smallest particles of the leaves. It is a wild, wonderful force, one that leaps at her touch and swirls around her, through her like a storm. It is ceaseless and chaotic and bright. It glimmers purple in her hands, lets her shape the rain into drops of syrup and the foliage into thin sheets of saccharine marzipan. It is the source of all the forest's perfections. 

The newfound knowledge is so beautiful that its very existence threatens to disassemble her too - to fray her wings and break her open with pure delight, as easily as she broke open the leaves. But she welcomes the wounds, and sets out on a journey of exploration, determined to find out even more about this _magic_ as she travels further still. 

_This world is perfect, because it is made of magic,_ she finally decides. 

_Magic is, therefore, perfect._

Everything is woven from at least a _little_ bit of magic, the Sugar Plum Fairy learns in the centuries to come. It is in _everything_ , from the rocks at the top of the mountains to the mud at the bottom of the riverbed. No matter where she looks, she is always able to find it, that sweet, sugary light which sparks at her touch. 

And as the Sugar Plum Fairy wanders the world anew, every blink of her myriad eyes brings something yet _more_ beautiful to the compendium of her consciousness. Earthquakes and tidal waves, avalanches and hurricanes. The crackle of fire and the thrum of air. The world has become a thousand fractal mysteries, enough magic to unravel and unwind for the rest of time.

The Sugar Plum Fairy does not think she possesses the power to die. 

But, if she could, she would _gladly_ die from joy. 

How wonderful it is, to be made of magic. How _wonderful_ it is, that it will never go away. 

***

And yet - oh further wonder still! - one day, the world improves itself. 

The Sugar Plum Fairy discovers small beings, residing in the forests and the slopes of the plains. They are complicated little things; they move much faster than plants or places or natural phenomenon. There are tiny ones that scurry, and larger ones that run. They are so much _smaller_ than her, even in their most powerful forms. And at first, they are not too worthy of attention. 

But soon, she learns the most beautiful truth yet. 

The Sugar Plum Fairy captures many of the creatures to prove her hypothesis, conducts her studies calmly and carefully. She sends her consciousness across the continent and manifests in thousands of forms to reach them - as friends, as lovers, as voices in the night. 

Once she has them near enough to touch, she breaks their bones and splits their skin and picks their torsos apart with her fingernails, searching, searching, searching. 

And every time, she finds the same truth inside. The same answer to the mystery.

_Magic._

The creatures - no, _people_ , she learns. They call themselves _people_ \- are made of magic too. Their joints and seams glimmer with it. Their blood and bones are rich with it, _overflowing_ with it. Sparks of magic shine bright behind their eyes, long after she has pulled their hearts from their chests and placed them in piles on the forest floor. 

And it is _wonderful._

 _They_ are wonderful. 

The Sugar Plum Fairy weeps for joy. 

She gathers the pieces of people up in her arms. Their warm wet drops of redness soak into her skin, send lines of crimson dripping down her lavender wings, but she doesn’t mind. She rocks the pieces and croons to them like a child and whispers them praises, tells them how beautiful and magical they are. _Dulce miraculum. You are made of magic, and you must be protected because of it._

She has devoted eternity to the careful practice of dismantling them - to learn, of course, how to love them better. 

And she will devote ten times _longer_ to their preservation. 

_Non solus, amor aeternus!_ How wonderful it is, to be made of magic. How wonderful, that she is no longer alone. 

***

The world spins on. 

More people grow. They become harder to understand, which is inconvenient, and harder to examine, to pull apart at the seams. 

But the Sugar Plum Fairy won’t hold that against them - it isn’t _their_ fault, after all. 

No. Something else has begun to happen. The world is changing for the worse. 

_Iucundus aeternum...cecidimus magni._

The golden glow within the leaves has begun to dim. 

Magic is leeching and leaking, running away like rivers of cola flowing down to the sea. But the Sugar Plum Fairy cannot follow the magic, and she cannot find it, and she cannot fix it. She does not know where it goes. 

But she knows that once it has departed, it _never_ returns. 

The horror of the thought sends her howling like a hurricane through the forests of Candia. Trees bend, then break in half, flimsy as paper in the wake of her pain. 

There is a town of people in the midst of the forest - a large one, tucked within the shadows of a dark green grove. The Sugar Plum Fairy stalks through it, and her wings and fangs turn fierce and frantic. And as she begins to carefully take the people of the town apart, she is terrified of what she might not find inside them. 

But hours later, the Sugar Plum Fairy weeps for joy once more, as blood-covered bodies lie heaped around her on the forest floor, their numbers ten times more myriad than the fading lavender leaves. 

Within the bodies, those simple, mortal forms, threads and beams of golden light gleam, lighting the forest bright as day. 

_Dulce miraculum!_

The people of the world still shine with magic. They are just as beautiful as ever. They have been spared from the fading fate of the rest of the world, from the horrible shadow falling over the natural places that the Sugar Plum Fairy loves so dearly. 

They are safe for the time being - and by dismantling them so lovingly, she has kept them so forever. 

They are _safe._

 _I will protect you,_ she promises the people lying around her. _N_ _o matter what it takes, or where we have to go._

The Sugar Plum Fairy’s tears flood the forests in purple and wash the bodies out towards the sea. She captures their souls as they leave, stores them safe and sound in the folds of her wings and the glints of her eyes, and resolves to build a new home for them. A bright and shining place, ten times better than even that first, perfect dawning of the world. 

(How _wonderful_ it is, to finally have a purpose. To preserve their magic _for_ them, far into the next eternity.)

***

It is rare that the Sugar Plum Fairy remembers the specifics of the world, after that. She is too busy hunting magic, making it her own so it _never_ has to fade away. 

But the Rocks sisters...they do stick in her mind.

They remind her of the storms that ravage mountains and coasts - wild, glowing, fierce and furious. _Unbreakable_ . In fact, they could be more than simply _people,_ she realizes, as they start to grow, in that odd, linear way that people always do. The sisters could - if their magic willed it - transform into something much more akin to her. Unhindered by their cumbersome bodies, or their great heavy burden of being _alive_. They could become _fr_ _ee,_ to wander the world for eternity. 

They grow further, and the magic in the Rocks family surges. It spreads even further, to the knight and the brother and into a misty future to the small children that have yet to be born.

It is so bold, so bright and sweet, that the Sugar Plum Fairy can see it in their eyes when she watches them from afar, even _without_ tearing them limb from limb to find the source. 

_A miracle. A mystery._

The eldest of the Rocks sisters turns to war, while the youngest turns to lies and honeyed words. The one who calls herself a saint turns to the Bulb, though it is mindless and it will never hear her. 

But the second-oldest - the mage - turns to the Sugar Plum Fairy herself, and spits in her face. 

_You would keep magic locked away,_ the mage says one day, standing in the midst of the circle of standing stones, her spectacles pushed down severely on the bridge of her nose. _So you are my enemy. And I - forever - will be yours._

For the first time in a long time, the Sugar Plum Fairy deigns to learn the name of a mortal. 

_Lazuli Rocks._

She does not send Lazuli down the path to death. Not _exactly_. The mage is already well on her way down that path by the time they first converse. She is heading towards a battlefield, towards a body riddled with arrows and a sobbing family left behind. She has not yet even wed her sweet young bride by the time she leaves Candia for the fields of war, but she carries the air of the grave around her nonetheless, like a gruesome wedding veil.

But at Pangranos - as Lazuli drops to her knees in the mud and blood of the battlefield, magic crackling through the sky around her - the Sugar Plum Fairy appears to her and only her, hovering in the air. 

She does not hide her true form. Not this time. Not for this _wizard -_ this woman who spits in the face of the Sweetening Path with _experiments_ and _plans_ and _changes_ to all the miraculous, perfect magic in the world. 

_Even you are beloved by me, Archmage, far though you have strayed from my path,_ the Sugar Plum Fairy says to Lazuli with a smile. The dying wizard stares up at her silently, her eyes steely and her jaw set firm. _Veni domum, sweet child. Your magic never has to die if you come home with me today._

Lazuli does not _grin,_ exactly, but for a minute, her mouth softens.

And as the Sugar Plum Fairy towers in the air, her wings at unnatural, crystalline angles, her teeth sharp and dripping with molten sugar, she feels... _ignored._ It is as if Lazuli Rocks - a mere pinprick in the universe, just another bag of flesh and bone and clotting blood - is seeing straight through her, to somewhere else entirely. 

_Never fear, ancient one. My magic is safe for now,_ Lazuli says with her last gasps of air. _And one day, in the future, you will face my family. And they will strike you down._

The light leaves Lazuli’s eyes, and she falls to the ground with a dull thud. There is a crash of thunder; the sky starts to darken with a storm, despite it being the middle of the day. 

The Sugar Plum Fairy watches in horror as tendrils of purple and sparkling blue spiral away from Lazuli’s form and dissipate in the air. Magic, fleeing from her body. Going somewhere that it cannot be followed. 

_Dulcis finem._

The world is weaker now than ever, without the wizard’s life force to keep it bright. 

_Such a selfish choice,_ she thinks, and vanishes into the tempestuous sky, leaving the wreckage of Lazuli Rocks behind. 

***

The Sugar Plum Fairy has many followers, over the years - small people, true, but people who help her shift the world towards its better, brighter form.

The Primogen, however...well, he is just a little different. 

To be fair, he does resent her. That much is crystal clear, and not particularly unusual. But he is also daring, and desperate - and above all, the loneliest creature she has _ever_ seen. In fact, she suspects he will save the Rocks family or die trying, simply because he has nothing else to do with himself. 

_You serve a noble purpose, Chancellor Lapin,_ she tells him, when he comes to the standing stones outside Castle Candy for the first time, performing his secret ceremonies to renew his powers. Lavender magic flows from her outstretched fingers, and swirls around his staff. He glowers at her in response and bows, just low enough to be a _little_ insolent. 

_I_ do _wish you would contrive some other task for me than babysitting and playing schoolmaster, my lady?_ he sneers. _This family is not worth my time._

But the Sugar Plum Fairy can see the lie even as it forms, congealing in the very cracks of his soul. 

Lapin has lived a life of deception, after all. She is simply doing him a favor - an _honor_ \- by giving him a purpose such as hers. Without her, he would be nothing. 

And one way or another, he will serve his purpose of protecting the Rocks family well. He is skilled and smart - and when skill and intelligence fail, people _do_ so seem to enjoy dying in unnecessarily heroic ways. 

_You do not like me very much, Lapin. I can tell,_ the Sugar Plum Fairy says, and leaves her thoughts unspoken. She smiles at him, and soothes her worried mind by imagining him safe and sound forever at the end of all this. For he will be so; she will make sure of that. Just like all the rest of these perfect, _foolish_ people. 

_But I won’t hold it against you, my dear Chancellor. I will make sure you always come home safe and sound._

Years later, as the House of Rocks flees into the night, the Primogen kneels, bloody and broken, on the floor of the cathedral. The Sugar Plum Fairy kneels before him, cups his face in her hands. She does her best to quiet his protestations, his murmurs, his requests for a little more time in the darkening mortal world. 

_Let me stay with them,_ he begs her, and there is so much pain in his voice that she is shocked the cathedral does not collapse on the spot. _I still have more to do._

 _You have done enough already,_ the Sugar Plum Fairy responds. But she does not say the truth that she wishes he could understand - that the world is a terrible place, that magic is leaving it every day. That what he sees as the dark doorway of death is actually a beautiful pathway, leading back to perfection - and that she knows, better than him, that it is the place he _deserves_ to be. 

It is a relief when he finally, _finally_ agrees to follow her home - and soon, she hopes, the rest of the Rocks family will join him. They are all so filled with magic. Such beautiful, beautiful creatures. 

Soon, they will learn to trust her, and all will be perfect once more. 

_My third wish,_ she whispers, her tears already starting to fall and soak the city in a sugary rain, _is for you to come home. And once you’re home, you’ll never have to leave._

***

Barely a month later, the Sugar Plum Fairy will stare at the tear-streaked face of Ruby Rocks and feel nothing but love and desperation. 

There is a void inside the young princess, a place of shadows that was not there before. It is a dangerous, deadly wound, borne out of the loss of her sister and the emptiness of being left behind. 

But - oh miracle of miracles! - that loss is only a delusion. Jet Rocks has been safe in eternity for weeks now, and soon, they will be reunited. The Sugar Plum Fairy waves her hand and summons the mortal form of the former heir, just on the other side of the pathway mired in mist. 

_She is here; go to her!_ she says to Ruby, and forces herself to maintain the illusion of her lesser form for just a few minutes more. People are perfect, but easily scared and often confused. If it is is required for her to trick them in order to save them...well. They are _more_ than worth the extra effort. 

_Did you kill my sister?_ Ruby Rocks responds instead. Her gaze is as sharp as a knife, and her fingers are twitching towards her bowstring. 

The Sugar Plum Fairy does not have a heart, but if she did, she believes, it would break. 

_Would you have come here if she was still alive?_ she finally whispers, and begins to weep - for people, wonderful _people,_ are foolish to the last. The child and her family should be coming home with ease and with joy, along the sweetest paths they can possibly take. They deserve that much. She would have _given_ them that much, if they could only understand the truth of the world. 

But the bright clatter of weapons and the blinding singe of magic fills the air as the family prepares to fight, and the Sugar Plum Fairy drops her illusion and towers up tall above the House of Rocks. She lets her fangs elongate, grows her nails sharp and long til they shimmer with the sickeningly-sweet magic of ages long past. 

It will not take long to take these people apart, she knows. It will not take long at all. 

Then, one way or another, she _will_ bring them home. 

**Author's Note:**

> so how about episode 13, huh?
> 
> anyway, I love how eldritch and terrifying the Sugar Plum Fairy's motivations have been revealed to be - the concept of _"I will kill the thing I love to protect it forever"_ is such a wonderful and multifaceted antagonist motive, and I've enjoyed seeing it explored in other media. while I need to do something more coherent on the topic, I got hit by the burning need to write post the latest episode; hence, this, written between 1 and 6 AM, which is the fastest I've rush-written something in a good long while.
> 
> find me @jadeandquartzes on tumblr!


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